


Alter

by sensitivebore



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 06:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensitivebore/pseuds/sensitivebore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carson and Hughes, altered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alter

She turns the little straw doll over and over in her hands. It is a simple thing, a silly thing, but sweet. It has been a long time since a man has shown her simple sweetness, happiness to be in her presence, and she has enjoyed the night. And now — a proposal. A question of marriage.

A question of leaving here, of leaving him.

Joe is the same as he ever was, laughing and fun to be with, with gentle eyes and earth-worn hands. She had turned him down all those years ago because she couldn't fathom the idea of another farm, another farmhouse; chickens in the yard and fires to be stoked. Why would anyone leave all of this finery for that?

And him, that big stone giant there in his office, locked up inside himself, inside his livery. They have lived and walked and breathed together for ten years now, and she knows him inside out and not at all and everything and nothing has been said and done between them. She hasn't gone to him tonight, even though she said she would. She had promised to call in and have a glass of wine, a cup of tea, as they always do, but she hasn't.

Elsie wouldn't know what to say. She places the doll carefully in her handbag and goes up to bed, turns in for the night. She can't make herself say everything and nothing, not one more night. Not after she had held a man's arm and been courted and squired, not after she had heard loving words. She can't sit by his fire and pretend, not tonight.

She'll sleep on Joe's proposal, let her dreams turn it over and over, see what her nightmind makes of it. Her daymind has almost decided, almost. It just needs a bit of a push, a nudge, something that will sign and seal it so she can deliver it knowing she's sure.

The push comes, the nudge.

She is having early afternoon sherry with him now, a small luxury they sometimes take when the evenings are going to be very busy. She is telling him about her quandary, her decision to make.

He makes light of Joe, makes a scathing remark —  _you found he was fat and red-faced and you never knew what you saw in him._  That is not the case, that is the opposite of the case. Last night she had seen every bit of what she had seen before in Joe; the honesty, the hardworking heart, the few demands, the not-complicated.

What Joe wanted from her was clear, easy, right and true; he wanted a woman to work side-by-side with him — not in a drafty tiny cold house like the one she grew up in, but a pretty whitewashed place with a lovely porch, a place of flowers and sun in the summertime, of cozy fires and braided rugs in the winter. He wanted a woman to give him a good tea in the afternoons when he breaks from supervising the fields, a woman that will perhaps give him a kiss and a cuddle with it. He wants a willing, smiling body at night, arms that will hold him close, legs that will open eagerly for love before they sleep a solid eight hours.

He wants a wife.

She tells Carson these things, in so many words of course, and she watches his face speculatively as he considers them, shrugs.

"Life has altered you."

Elsie blinks, waits. Waits for something, for anything. Any sign of affection, any kind touch, any look of longing. Anything. A word. A gesture, even; she will take a gesture, she can grab that and make it what she needs it to be, to keep going, to carry on with him in this strange dance they have danced for so long. This friendship relationship love not love they have between them.

_Life has altered you._

And that is it, that is the push she needs. That is what her daymind needs to close ranks with her nightmind and she knows now, knows what to do. Elsie has known all along, but she needed the word.

The next morning, she is putting on her coat, pulling it around herself, and she is smiling. She shouldn't be, perhaps, but she is. Joe had asked she meet him, that she bring her answer, and she is, she is taking her answer with her and it's the right one, the only one. Carson stops in her doorway, appraises her, sees her preparing to go out.

"You're off, then."

She puts on her hat, hums a little sound of agreement. There is something, maybe, a flicker of something in his grey sky eyes, something maybe reaching out down in the very bottom depths. She pushes her hatpin into her hair firmly, anchors it.

"Yes, I am. I am off."

She takes her handbag and leaves, enjoys the stroll in the crisp spring coolness. This is the time when everything is becoming born on a farm, everything — the crops, the lambs, the foals, the chicks. So different from Downton, which is a dead place. So little really lives at Downton, it is a museum to what had been, not what is to come.

She does not love Joe. Elsie knows.

_Life has altered you._

He is a good man, one of the best she has known. A good man with a good thriving farm and gentle hands and laughing eyes.

_Life has altered you._

She does not love him, but she will learn, for isn't that what love is? Isn't that how she had come to love him — had seen through the austerity and the coldness and the haughty words and snobbish remarks?

If she had learned to love one for what he was, she could learn to love the other for what he was not.

_Life has altered her, and what would be the point of living —_

Carson is standing in her doorway still, his fingers curled loosely around the doorknob, and he sees that her rotas are closed, that her pens are wiped and dried, and that's when he knows she is going to accept. She is going to marry that man and leave Downton, and this office will be stripped of all the things he has come to know by heart. Her photographs, her shawl, her little statuettes. A long, shuddering sigh leaves him and he doesn't know, doesn't know how to stop her, how to tell her anything, he never has. But that is not true, not if he is honest — there were times when he could have said kinder words, maybe let his hand linger on her wrist. Maybe done something other than what he did. He could have, but he didn't. It's the story of his life with her, everything left too late, everything ephemeral, everything ghosts and words unsaid and hands carefully held away. He could have, over and over again.

But he didn't.

She walks on and Joe is waiting for her there, waiting in soft sunlight, and her smile widens. They will have a fine life, she and him, of animals and plants and growing things. It will not be the same as Downton, it will be nothing like it at all, and that's all right. That's fine by her. She is open to change.

_— what would be the point of living if we didn't let life change us?_


End file.
